Tales of the Train
2003-03-28 � 10:06 a.m.

I've been spoiled — I recognize this. I have very rarely had to be without an automobile since I turned sixteen and was able to drive. In my defense, I lived in a small town with no public transportation and our house was five miles outside town to boot. I had to have a car just to get to work.

Now I live in Portland and even though public transit is now available to me (by some accounts the public transit system here is terrible, by others brilliant; I have no basis of comparison), I still drove myself to work everyday. Of course I work quite some distance away, but it is certainly possible to get there by train and bus (as I have learned quite well over the last two weeks).

Here's the thing though — it takes me an hour and a half one way to get to work on public transit, but only twenty-five minutes if I drive myself. So, fifty minutes of travel time a day, in the privacy of my own vehicle where I can sit my coffee cup down, alternately listen to NPR and loud rock music, or three hours round trip where my entertainment is the various odors of the people around me.

Hard choice.

But not really one I have the option of making, as my vehicle is in a state of disrepair. So public transit it is. I now have to get up at five thirty in the morning (usually more like five-fifty) so I can make the train by six thirty so I can be at work by eight a.m. If I actually do that and get here by eight, that means I get off at six thirty, so if I'm lucky I get home by eight p.m.

It's frankly exhausting.

But, as I have been saying more and more frequently lately, what are you going to do?

Besides the odors of the human body and the various fragrances that people choose to douse themselves in, I have several problems with riding the train and bus (actually I've found the bus to be much more pleasant, but maybe that's because I'm on it a shorter amount of time). Firstly is the lack of privacy. That may seem a no-brainer, but I do not understand what it is about sitting in a public space that makes people believe that you are available for conversation, or that anything about you — what you are reading, wearing, carrying, etc. — is open to commentary and question.

Also the preponderance of mentally ill people is frightening. I have always been in favor of more public programs for the treatment of the mentally ill, and disgusted at the alacrity with which such programs are excised from budgets when there is a cash flow problem, but... But now I am seeing the problem up front and in close, and this is something that needs to be addressed. This is a gigantic portion of our population that we are failing. Maybe this hits closer to home because I can see the small ribbon of sanity that separates me from many of them. Last week I sat near a young man who was unable to stop talking, his schizophrenic monologue obviously a direct link from whatever was going through his head at the time to his mouth, a constant stream of words that functioned as speech only because it was actually English and not some form of glossolalia. The thing about this particular young man that was worrisome to me is that I was with him. I was following along, not lost, to me he made sense in a pretty basic way. While most people looked at him askance and edged away, obviously afraid that he would finally "snap" and attack, I knew he wouldn't. That wasn't his trip. I know, because that could be me tomorrow, or next week.

Also this riding the train thing is expensive. Not in fares, though that is expensive in it's own way because of the length of my trip (not that much less than my car, though if I had known ahead of time I could have stocked up with month-long fares at a reduced rate), but in reading material.

I never thought that my love of books would be detrimental, but it is. Over the last two weeks of riding public transit I have gone through seven full-length novels, three magazines, and the two local weeklies for both weeks. I'm out of new material now, and I am mildly worried. I suppose that I could go to the library, but my book fetish includes ownership — I crave the actual physical thing, the ability to go back to that story whenever I want. I own too many books (two full bookcases at my parents' house, ten boxes in the attic, two bookcases at my current residence and more in piles besides), but I am always acquiring more simply because I go through them so quickly.

This book fetish is proving expensive though. I don't know how to address it. The thought of going through a commute of that length with nothing to read makes me feel vaguely ill. I am even considering the prospect of attacking Infinite Jest again, something I have started and given up on numerous times (I have read the whole thing, no worries there).

All of this has only added to my recent discombobulation...I don't know yet where it will lead me.

-t

Currently Aurally Inducing: Tito Puente, Ay Mi Cuba
Selection of the Lyrical Vocabulary: n/a

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